Nature of Dark Magic (was Motivations for Joining DEs )

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 141236

> Neri:
> My theory is that what makes dark magic *Dark* is INTENTION. That 
is, 
> the very power of Dark Magic comes from intent of the wizard to 
harm 
> somebody else, and it won't work at all unless there is an evil 
> intention.

zgirnius:
This also makes sense to me. It is consistent with Bella's statements 
(as you note in portions I have snipped) and also with Crouch!Moody's 
confidence his whole class could try to AK him and would have no 
success.

Neri:
> This theory has a slight problem with Harry using Sectumsempra on 
> Draco without meaning it. We can solve this by assuming that 
> Sectumsempra is "dark" but not "Dark", but it might be something 
> else. I think Harry's Sectumsempra wouldn't have worked at all if 
he 
> didn't hate Draco so much. JKR builds Harry's hate for Draco during 
> all of HBP, and in fact during the whole series, and then uses the 
> bathroom incident as a warning: this is what happens to you if you 
> let your hate towards your enemy take hold of you.

zgirnius:
Snape's statement to Harry that Sectumsempra is Dark Magic is 
capitalized in the book. (How does that work? Is this Harry's 
interpretation? Is it how JKR would classify that spell?) Your 
explanation about Harry's quite successful use of Sectumsempra makes 
sense in terms of how he felt about Draco at that time.

I guess this would indicate that it is lucky for Snape that he is so 
much faster/more experienced than Harry. I was assuming that even if 
one of those Crucios in "The Flight of the Prince" got through, they 
would not amount to much...but maybe Harry has "progressed" in the 
Dark Arts since the endof Book 5.